A few years ago I came across the term Endism while reading a transcript of a round-table discussion about the end of art. While researching for my MA, I have returned to endings: the end of art, the end of history, the end of democracy, the end of man altogether. I have begun my written project with a question about man’s end, and wondered if an AI entity would feel compelled to record such an event. With that in mind, here’s a collection of images generated by one of several recently released artificial intelligence platforms, Midjourney. I prompted it with words such as “nuclear end of reality”, “the end of the world” or “man’s last moments”. I also asked it to consider Harold Edgerton’s images of nuclear detonations.
It is quite easy to find predictions about the end of man, a particular kind of man – white, entitled, independent – in academic feminist and Marxist literature (which is arguably part of what’s fuelling the current raging and destructive reaction from the right across the world). However, I enjoy the fact that designer John Mauriello suggests on Youtube that the latest generation of machine learning text-to-image generators will be the end of individualistic hero artists. I have no idea if he’s right or wrong, and I don’t want to make assumptions about his politics, but it is interesting to see the idea exist in the kind of media space our kids visit, rather than in inaccessible academia. Mind you, I don’t know why I’m surprised. So much of what my children consume online is extremely sophisticated. There is a lot of dreadful content in the web-o-sphere, but it’s probably true their generation will be the most educated ever*, which is surely a good thing, since they have an awful lot to solve if mankind wants to avoid its ultimate end.
Refs:
Geulen, E. (2006) The end of art: readings in a rumor after Hegel. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press.
*Kaufman, P.B. (2021) The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge. Seven Stories Press.
Mauriello, J. 2022, Will Artificial Intelligence End Human Creativity? Design Theory [Youtube] Accessed 6th August 2022
Professor Edgerton’s Atomic Camera (no date) Damn Interesting. Available at: https://www.damninteresting.com/curio/rapatronic-nuclear-photographs/ (Accessed: 6 August 2022).